Chapter 3

 

Whitney

 

As I approach yet another little Spanish village, the dirt path crunching under my hiking boots, I can’t believe that sometime this afternoon, I’ll be at the Santiago de Compostela cathedral. I’ve been walking toward this goal for 192 miles. I only have six more miles to Santiago!

Six miles!

I’m excited to get there at last, nervous about what it will really be like, curious about whether or not it will live up to my expectations, and sad that my journey is almost at an end.

It helps that it’s not really the end anymore.

I didn’t know how many miles I’d be able to walk each day, so I went with the low end of the average range I’d read about on the blogs. Turns out, I’m more in the middle. A few days ago I realized I was going to arrive in Santiago earlier than anticipated, which allowed me to add something I originally thought I didn’t have time to do.

Most pilgrims end their walk in Santiago. The cathedral is, after all, our ultimate destination and the place where all paths meet. However, a smaller number of people continue on to the town of Finisterre. It’s another three days’ walk from Santiago, is right on the coast, and is what medieval Europeans thought was the end of the earth. Finisterre means end of the land.

And I really want to see it.

A few days ago, I decided I’ll walk to Finisterre, then take a cab back to Santiago so I can catch my flight home. 

The dirt path morphs into smooth cobblestone once I’m in town, and I soon spot a group of pilgrims having lunch on a café patio. It’s just simple tables and plastic chairs, but there’s shade from an awning and food and the welcoming presence of other pilgrims. Maggie is among them. She spots me and waves me over. We walked together for about forty minutes or so this morning before saying goodbye. As I pull out the empty chair opposite her, I notice her plate is nothing but bread crumbs now and her wine glass is almost empty. She’s clearly been here awhile.

There are three other people around the table, plus someone who must have stepped away for a moment, because in front of the empty chair next to me is a plate with half a bowl of soup and a full sandwich.

“Everyone, this is Whitney,” Maggie says, by way of introduction. I gratefully unload my pack on the ground, but don’t sit down yet so I can shake hands with people as we’re introduced.

“This is Nicolas.” Maggie gestures to the middle-aged man next to her. We give each other a smile and a nod and I shake his hand. “Enzo and his girlfriend Josephine,” Maggie says pointing, and I shake hands with each. “And Connor,” she says, gesturing next to me. In my peripheral vision, I see someone come up next to me, presumably to reclaim his chair and his lunch.

I extend my hand automatically, at the same time turning to see who it is. Blue eyes. Scruffy jaw.

Holy crap, it’s Navy Shirt. Except he’s in a green shirt now and tan shorts.

His eyebrows raise just slightly at the sight of me, but he offers a friendly smile and takes my hand. My heart stops for half a second. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been taken by surprise or if it’s because my hand is inside his, and those blue eyes are only maybe a foot away from me, and he’s tall, and the green shirt he has on now hugs those broad-shoulders just right, and—

Whoa, girl. Keep your head on.

I try to take my hand away, but he holds on. A slight breeze pushes through, making my pony tail brush the back of my neck.

“And you are?” he asks, still with that smile. His hand is so warm.

“Whitney.”

Still smiling, he gives my hand a little squeeze before saying, “Whitney,” and finally letting me go.

As we take our seats, I give myself a firm talking to. He’s beyond gorgeous and I’m reacting to it, no question. But that’s just biology and I need to use my head. I don’t know him and, if he was participating in the conversation I heard on the road yesterday, I don’t want to.

Not that it matters. It’s not like we’re on a date or something. I don’t have to know him or like him. He’s just one more person I’ll meet here, then never again. Course... this is the third time I’ve seen him in two days.

Our orbits get nearer and nearer to one another each time, too. We’re sitting so close, we’re practically rubbing shoulders.

The man next to Maggie—I already forget his name, but he has a sunburnt bald head—asks me where I’m from. “California,” I answer, grateful for a distraction from sexy hands and shoulders.

“Ah, another American.” He indicates Connor, but I dare not look at him again so soon. I’m still recovering from the last time. “He’s from California, too.”

I can’t help but turn to Connor in surprise. He could live hundreds of miles away in the southern corner of the state, for all I know, but being this far from home, anywhere in California is practically my own backyard. “Really?”

“Used to be,” he says. “I’m not from anywhere anymore, but my family still lives in central California. What part are you in?”

“San Francisco.” I’m about to ask what he means by not being from anywhere anymore, but the waitress comes outside to take my order. I get the typical pilgrim’s meal—a Bocadillo and wine—and by the time I’m done ordering, the conversation around the table has gone on, as usually happens in these situations.

Everything I’d read about the fluid social aspect of the Camino was pretty accurate. As you run into people, you might have a light-hearted chat for a few minutes, or end up in a surprisingly deep conversation with someone you’ll likely never see again. 

Unless you’ve seen him three times already. I glance at Connor, who’s chewing a bite of sandwich. He glances at me too. Man, those blue eyes.

I look to Maggie. She’s leaning back in her chair, listening to the conversation at the table. Everyone’s currently comparing notes about where they started on the Camino, one of the favorite topics among pilgrims. (Others are places of origin, why we’re walking the Way, and how many blisters we have.) The couple at the table tell us they started at the beginning of the French Way in St. Jean Pied de Port. Turns out, they actually live there and after years of seeing pilgrims come into their city, they finally decided to do the Camino themselves.

As they share their story (the man has a thick French accent, but the woman speaks English almost like a native), I’m suddenly self-conscious of the fact that I have no makeup on. I don’t wear much makeup to start with, and am usually comfortable enough without it that I’ll just throw on lip gloss some days and be done with it, but right now I’m wishing I looked a little more put together. Not to mention the fact that we pilgrims tend to smell like we’ve just come from the gym. Course, it smells good on him. Not that I’m paying attention to that.

The woman finishes her story and asks Maggie where she started the Camino.

“Burgos,” Maggie says. “If I didn’t have to split my time off with my family’s vacation, I could’ve walked the whole thing.” I’ve heard this story once before, so I know how frustrated she was about the situation. Even if I didn’t already know, her tone says it all. “My family spends a week in Cork every summer and there’s no gettin out’a that one.”

“Not even for this one year?” the French woman asks. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Connor take a sip of his wine. I’m more aware of his movements than I want to be.

“Ach, noooo,” Maggie says in her Irish brogue. “It’s tradition, you see. Way back when I was a wee lass my parents decided we’d do it every year and, by golly, that’s the way it’ll be.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Connor says, putting down his glass. “How other people think they get to make decisions that affect the rest of our lives?”

I turn to him, intrigued in spite of myself. “There’s a story behind that comment.”

He smiles, and nods down at his plate. “Yeah, I guess there is.” He takes a bite, but we’re all watching him in anticipation.

He swallows and glances around. His eyes land on me for a few seconds longer than anyone else.

“Well?” the bald man says. “Let’s hear it.”

Connor gives a soft laugh that I feel in my chest. “It’s not that exciting. My parents run a hotel and my older brother and sister both work there. I did too, of course. It was just kind of assumed I’d make that my career, but...”

He lets the word trail away.

Maggie leans in. “You’re a wee rebel child, aren’t ya?”

He laughs. “Sort of. I had different plans for my own life and one day, I finally got up the courage to tell them.”

“How’d that go over?” I ask.

“Like a rock, at first,” he says simply, but when his eyes rest on me again, it feels like there’s something else going on under the surface. It’s that same feeling I get at the beginning of a first date, when by all appearances the two of you are just having a casual conversation, but the eyes are trying to go deeper. He’s wondering about you, and you’re wondering about him.

That’s what it feels like right now, here on this patio cafe with all these other pilgrims around and him talking about his family’s reaction to the news that he didn’t want to be in their business. He’s not just looking at me. He’s taking notice. I’m taking notice too. I don’t know what I think about that.

“Everyone’s okay with it now, though,” he continues. “It’s been almost four years.”

“And your family’s business isn’t suffering?” the French woman asks.

“Oh no. They didn’t need me for free labor, or anything. It wasn’t about that.”

I want to ask what it was about. Instead I ask, “So what are you doing instead?”

“Feeding my wanderlust,” he says with a grin and a wink, and that wink gives me a little flutter, like he physically poked my heart with it. “I go where the wind takes me, and more or less live wherever my boat’s docked.”

I raise my eyebrows. So that explains his earlier comment about not being from anywhere.

“Those were the plans you had for your life?” the French woman asks.

Connor shrugs good-naturedly. “The world is a fascinating place, and I want to see as much of it as I can. I can’t think of anything better. I mean, soon I’ll be heading down that road,” he nods his head in that direction, “and I’ll be seeing something I’ve never seen before. I’m sitting here talking to people I never would’ve met otherwise.”

He picks up his glass, swoops it in a little circle indicating all of us, and smiles a little broader when he gets to me. He raises his glass in a toast. When he takes a drink, the sunlight winks off the rim.

The waitress comes out and deposits my food and wine in front of me. I ignore it at first. I have so many questions. He just... wanders the world? Doesn’t he need to work? Is he independently wealthy? But that doesn’t seem right, if the family business is a little hotel.

I don’t want to just shoot off all my questions rapid-fire style, but I want to know these things. Turns out, everyone else seems as intrigued as I am. They spend the next several minutes battering him with questions and we listen to him tell us about bath houses in South Korea, cockroaches the size of turtles in Ecuador, and dancing in Carnival in Rio. Pretty much anywhere he goes, he’ll find someplace to kayak, parasail, surf, or hike. He’s climbed the fucking K2 in Pakistan. It’s mesmerizing.

He doesn’t just talk about what he’s done and where he’s been, though. After a while I notice that whenever he mentions a place, he talks most about the people he’s met there.

Eventually, the French man casts aside good etiquette and rather pointedly asks Connor what he does for a living. We learn he “dabbles in investments” and has occasionally worked a handful of odd jobs—as a salmon fisher in Alaska, a river guide in Brazil, a surfing instructor in Australia. Even when talking about work, he makes it sound like it was all about the experience, and not at all about the money. From the sounds of it, he simply does these things until he decides he’s ready to try something else.

I think about travelling the world like he does, and part of me is crazy jealous. I’d love to travel more. It’s been so amazing this entire trip. How cool would it be to be able to see the world to my heart’s content? But on the other hand, the idea of going from place to place and never having anywhere to go home to afterward? I don’t know. I think it’d be unsettling after a while too.

“Not too many people have the guts to live that kind of life,” the bald man says.

“I can’t even imagine it,” I say.

“Why’s that?” Connor asks, turning slightly so he’s facing me better. He’s been right next to me this entire time, but that little movement makes him feel that much closer. It’s almost intimate.

“I don’t know. I think it’d be fun, but I also think it’d be hard not to have a home.”

He nods. “For some it would be. That’s true.”

“But not for you?”

His eyes light up and he leans in closer, making my heart sprint. “The world is my home.”

I feel like I’m sort of sliding into a vortex. Every time I look at this guy, the effect he has on me gets a little bit stronger. It’s kind of alarming.

The waitress comes to ask if anyone wants dessert. I’m finished with my lunch by now, as is everyone else. Maggie, Connor, and the bald man eagerly place their orders. The French couple says they’d better be on their way and start gathering their packs from against the wall. I notice Connor’s pack and walking stick are over there as well.

The interruption has been enough for me to back up a little and get a glance at this situation from a distance. If we were in a cafe back home, I’d maybe try to get to know him better. I realize I might have made an assumption about him the first time I saw him, but I’d still try to find out what he thought about what those guys were saying, because it was bad enough that it would matter to me.

If I was wrong about him, I’d maybe let myself slide into whatever vortex Connor is. Because it’s been a long, long time since I’ve come across anyone interesting enough to get this tingly over.

But I’m not home. I’m in Spain, and every single person at this table is eventually going their separate ways, including Connor. In five days, I’m flying back to San Francisco. Today, I’m walking the last leg into Santiago. I’ve been waiting fourteen days for this. Hell, years. I didn’t come here to crush on this mystery man. I’m here for me. I have a cathedral to see.

The waitress comes to me last, wanting to know if I want dessert or not.

“I think I’ll go.” Now that the words are out of my mouth, my heart deflates a bit with regret, but my mind is firm.

I stand, and sense Connor watching me do it. I grab my pack and heft it over my shoulders. Maggie stands to give me a hug, and we say goodbye like it’s the last time, just as we have every time.

But Connor doesn’t say goodbye. I bid farewell to the others, then finally allow myself to look at him before leaving. He’s wearing a thoughtful, almost serious expression. “See you around, Whitney.”

The way he says it, it sounds like a hope, more than a certainty.

But maybe not.

After all, I’m leaving, and he’s not trying to get me to stay.

“Bye,” I say, and make myself follow through. I head out to the road several steps behind the others. The sound of my name on his lips echoes in my mind, but I shake it off, and keep going.

 

 

The last few miles to the cathedral cut through the large, bustling city of Santiago de Compostela. It’s strange to be completing such a monumental, almost spiritual task while the busy sounds and activities of ordinary city life go on all around you. But when I finally approach the soaring, gothic cathedral, my lingering worries that reality might not live up to expectations disappear.

It’s far, far better than I expected. Standing there in the square looking up at the massive, intricate towers, I’m overwhelmed with joy. The line of pilgrims waiting for their certificate of completion is massive and does, in truth, seem too ordinary a thing for such a momentous occasion. But I’m buzzing anyway.

As I’m waiting, I end up seeing a mother and her son from Toronto, pilgrims I met clear back on day two, and we eagerly congratulate one other on making it. Later, seeing my own certificate, my Compostela, with my name written across the top... I couldn’t stop grinning. I’ve sat through almost an entire Catholic mass now, which I’m finding alternately fascinating and dull, but I am still so light in my heart. And I can’t stop running my fingers over the name on my certificate.

I can’t believe I really did this.

I’m on a hard, ancient, wooden pew, surrounded by other pilgrims. This is the daily afternoon “Pilgrim’s Mass,” so there are plenty of us. As the mass draws closer to the end, I feel the anticipation growing. We’re all eager to see the famous ceremony, the Botafumeiro.

The main part of the cathedral’s interior is laid out like a cross, with pews filling the long bottom end, called the nave, and more pews in each arm of the cross, called the transept. At the center point where the lines of the cross meet, there’s a large stage with an altar toward the rear. Behind the altar, in what would be the top of the cross, it’s floor-to-ceiling decorations that are all gold-covered and so ornate that it’s been enough to keep me entertained during the mass.

Hanging high above the altar is a large, very elaborate incense burner made of silver-plated brass. It’s over a hundred and fifty years old, and I read that when they load it with the coals, it weighs nearly a hundred and forty pounds.

The rope attached to the top of the Botafumeiro goes all the way up to the soaring, arched ceiling, then back down at an angle to a group of priests in red robes. They’re all standing in a circle, and just before it gets to their little group, the massive rope splits into parts so they each have hold of an end.

They slowly lower the Botafumeiro to the altar where two priests in red robes have to hold it still—the massive censer is nearly five feet tall—and other priests in white robes each ceremoniously take a spoonful of the incense and add it to the censer. It starts to emit soft plumes of gray smoke and they all leave the altar, save one priest in a red robe, who is standing next to the giant incense burner.

For a moment, all is still and the congregation seems to hold its breath. My skin pricks with anticipation.

The priests holding on to the rope tug together as one and the censer bounces high once, twice. It comes to a stop, still hanging straight, but with the base now just above the head of the priest at the altar. He grabs hold of the base, pulls back a few steps, then gives the Botafumeiro a strong but graceful push.

It arches out maybe ten feet away from him, as he calmly descends from the altar. He is out of the way well before the censer swings back to where he’d been. It swings through gently. As it comes back down, just as it reaches the center point, the priests pull together on their ropes and the censer jerks upward and down before completing its swing.

I watch it, captivated, as it swings out a little farther this time. Yet again, acting as one, the priests pull their ropes when the censer is at the center point. Again, it seems to bounce in midair and starts swinging much faster now. My heartbeat speeds up watching it.

Only a few more swings back and forth, and it’s going farther out, higher and faster. It’s trailing gray smoke and I catch a whiff of the sweet scent now as it rushes down one arm of the transept, then high up the other arm. It’s traveling in such a wide arc, I have to turn my head to follow its path.

Within seconds, the one-hundred-forty-pound mass of smoking silver is swinging so high, that at its highest point the rope it’s attached to is nearly horizontal. There’s a subtle but audible gasp from the congregation.

I read the censer gets up to forty-two miles per hour in only a minute and a half, but right now, as it speeds along, it seems to be going much faster than that. And here we all are beneath it. I wonder if I’m the only one hoping the rope doesn’t break. My heart is pounding in awe.

The priests are no longer tugging on the rope; instead they’re letting the laws of physics take over. Too soon the Botafumeiro is slowing down. It swings serenely for a few minutes, the arc getting smaller as it goes slower and slower. It’s strangely peaceful, after the powerful acrobatics it’s just performed.

When its arc is some twenty feet across, the red-robed priest calmly steps up to the altar, puts himself just in the path of the Botafumeiro, and grabs on with both hands. Immediately after he catches it, he brings it into a gentle spin, turning himself around with it, as gracefully as any dance team I’ve ever seen, and brings it to a calm stop.

I let my breath out. I didn’t realize I’d been holding it.

I glance around at the people near me. That was amazing! I want to say. I want to applaud! But maybe they know how to behave in church better than I do, because they all look full of reverent approval and not damnable Protestant excitement, like me.

At the conclusion, we file out. The peace I felt at the conclusion of the ceremony is still with me. I wish I could feel this all the time, and am even more resolved to make healthier decisions when I go back home. Maybe if I can try to stay balanced, like the Botafumeiro, I’ll be able to recreate some of this peace for myself.

I hear it’s flying again at the late evening mass tonight, a rare treat. While I’m not keen on sitting through another long service, I’ll not turn down the chance to see it twice. I’ll be back.

Not ready to leave the vicinity of the cathedral just yet, I mill about the square outside. I scan the crowds and the many pilgrims, wondering if I’ll see anyone else I know. I look for curly red hair.

In spite of myself, I look for a green shirt.

I come up short on both accounts, but I do run into Roy from Tennessee again. We compare notes on our Camino journey since we saw one another a week ago. He’s flying home in the morning, and is looking forward to his wife’s home cooked meals (he’s requested cornbread and fried okra). We chat for a while about the finer points of cornbread making (apparently, one must use buttermilk) before we say our final goodbyes and I head to my hotel to check in.

After days of basic accommodations, laundry lines, and thin mattresses, a private room with a real bed is pure luxury. But nothing, nothing, compares to the indulgence of the bath. Oh god, the warm water. The freedom to relax and take my time. I don’t even have to wear shower shoes!

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that my mind strays to Connor more than once. I’ll blame it on being naked in the tub. And his hotness. And the fact that it’s been way too long since I’ve been with a man. But I really don’t want to fantasize about someone I walked away from, so I force myself to think of other things and reflect on my incredible experiences over the past two weeks instead.

I stay in the tub until the water cools, then use the hotel’s blow dryer to actually dry my hair. Another luxury! I even decide to forgo the hat and ponytail and leave my hair down. Feeling clean and fresh, I head out so I can get some dinner before returning to the cathedral for a second viewing of the Botafumeiro.

I’m waiting for the elevator, wondering if I should ask the front desk for restaurant suggestions or just find a place on my own. Then the doors open to reveal someone standing inside.

My lips part in surprise. Connor does a double take, then gives me a slow, slow smile.

Umm.... okay. This is a whole new ballgame now.